Still no colours for this revolution

Myanmar saves Musharraf

No sanctions. No international outrage. Pakistan’s is not even a proper revolution for those who bestow colours are busy covering the one further East. With Myanmar’s junta upstaging Pakistan’s as the bad guys of the moment, Gen Musharraf’s ‘re-election’ campaign is proceeding apace. Kamran Shafi registers the outrage:

While most of the cable operators had been forced to go off the air, satellite channels showed us in living colour Pakistanâ€™s day of unmitigated shame. We saw senior lawyer and respected public figure Aitzaz Ahsan first being hit in the stomach by a large rock thrown right before our eyes by the police, and when he bravely fought back, being cruelly beaten by five of them with sticks, the assault breaking the arm of Zamurrad Khan, MNA of the PPP who was trying to protect Aitzaz.

While any violence is to be condemned, the primary responsibility for Saturdayâ€™s rests completely and entirely with the junta and its minions. Why, the inspector-general of the Islamabad police, an individual recently posted reportedly for his well known more-loyal-than-the-king attitude, was himself running up and down the police cordon stick in hand, beating whoever came within range. He also looked quite ludicrous: a major generalâ€™s ranks on his shoulders, but his peak cap secured under his chin with a chinstrap much like a cavalry trooper (sawar) out of Doctor Zhivago.

But let us not be too hard on the man: the geographical size and population of Islamabad the Beautiful is smaller than a sub-tehsil in the Punjab in which an inspector of police is the senior police officer. Mayhap the interior ministry deliberately chooses officers of the administrative capability of an inspector for Islamabadâ€™s inspector general. The manâ€™s behaviour was shameful. He should be tried in a court of law. [Dawn]

The Supreme Court got the errant police chief suspended. But not before he finished the job he was assigned.